CCSO collaborates with LMHA to navigate mental health crises
While more than one in five adults in the U.S. lives with a mental illness, Texas ranks last in access to mental health care. However, the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office and Spindletop Center are working to get people the help they need rather than just put them in jail.
Jarrod Marks is a designated mental health deputy at the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office. While the department has other certified mental health deputies, Marks is the only one assigned solely to mental health cases. He works alongside a crisis mental health professional as part of the Spindletop ASAP Team -- Assistance, Stabilization and Prevention. Spindletop Center is the local mental health authority (LMHA) for Chambers, Jefferson, Orange, Hardin and Jasper counties.
Marks said that every day is different for them as an ASAP team. They get referrals from Spindletop’s crisis hotline, the sheriff’s office, schools and hospitals. When they don’t have any referrals, they work proactively, following up with their recent clients.
‘‘I don't really know what's going to happen from day to day,’’ said Marks, who has been at the intersection of mental health and law enforcement for eight years. ‘‘The main goal is to really kind of prevent, instead of just coming in in the middle of a crisis, which sometimes we have to do (too).’’
The lack of preventive mental health services, such as professional counselors, increases the risk of law enforcement getting involved in acute mental health episodes, said Greg Hansch, executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Texas, which advocates for people with mental illness and their families.
‘‘We've seen too many, far too many examples of dramatically negative consequences resulting from law enforcement officers being there on the scene kind of quarterbacking a response to a mental health crisis - people have lost their lives, people end up disproportionately incarcerated,’’ said Hansch.
Mental health officers in Chambers County
Of all the law enforcement agencies in Chambers County, out of 123 peace officers, eight were certified as mental health officers as of June, according to state data Texas Community Health News acquired from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. That is 6.5%, which is lower than the state average of 9%.
Since 2017, all peace officers in Texas are required to receive 40 hours of crisis intervention training, as a result of Sandra Bland Act, but that is still relatively minimal, Hansch said. Designated mental health deputies, like Marks, undergo additional mental health training before they can be certified by the law enforcement commission.
ASAP Program helps to save lives and money
The aim of the ASAP program, run by 22 staff members in five counties, is to prevent inappropriate incarcerations or hospitalizations of individuals in criminal justice system who are experiencing mental illness. ASAP is funded by state grants, primarily by the Mental Health Grant for Justice-Involved Individuals (MHGJII).
The ASAP program also works with the clients who are already in the judicial system, arrested for class C misdemeanors, such as criminal trespass or disorderly conduct. The Sandra Bland Act also requires county jails to provide psychiatric treatment to inmates, and the CCSO was one of the first departments of its size to enter a partnership with the LMHA to provide that treatment, said Tommy Smith, crisis prevention specialist at Spindletop Center.
‘‘Sheriff Brian Hawthorne has been a trailblazer in mental health in the judicial system,” Smith said. “He is in a very small rural county that is sandwiched between two urban counties that have lots of resources and more funding, but he went out of his way to work with us, and we started a program.’’
Smith said that from Sept. 1, 2023, to Aug. 31, 2024, they were able to save the five counties they serve nearly $23 million by diverting individuals from jails, hospitals and mental health hearings.
Smith said that 85% of ASAP’s mental health clients have no insurance, and hospitals either must use limited indigent care funds or absorb the costs of care. But it is more than just saving the community money, it’s about getting the much-needed treatment to individuals suffering from mental health crises in a timely manner, Smith said.
If a mental health client is found incompetent to stand trial, they wait for a bed at a state hospital for a competency restoration, which is currently about 590 days in Texas even if the individual was arrested for a minor misdemeanor, which carries a maximum sentence of 180 days.
‘‘So, these people are actually staying in jail longer because they're sick than those who are not,” Smith said.
The ASAP program has helped Chambers County reduce the average stay for a person deemed incompetent to stand trial to about 45 days, Smith said.
Picking the right deputy
Hawthorne said that his goal is to get at least 50% of his deputies trained in mental health crisis intervention. A number of his deputies already have additional training, but mental health is not their sole assignment.
‘‘You always have to pick the right deputy,” Hawthrone said. “I don't want you to just think it's every deputy, right? I mean, it takes those special deputies, specially trained, that have a lot of patience and work well with people.’’
Marks worked patrol before switching to the role of a mental health deputy.
‘‘It's hard sometimes.” Marks said. “But, I mean, when you can actually help someone, that's rewarding, so it kind of revitalizes you, in a sense.’’
Hansch at NAMI said that co-responder programs, such as Spindletop’s ASAP, achieve incredible things and that is why they are increasing in popularity.
‘‘They're keeping people out of the criminal justice system. They're reducing use of force. They're increasing engagement with mental health treatment,’’ said Hansch, adding that an even better approach would be to also have a paramedic as part of the team.
For further information, visit spindletopcenter.org. In a crisis, call Spindletop 24-hour toll-free crisis hotline at 800-937-8097, or emergency services, 911.
Liza Kalinina is a graduate student, an instructional assistant in the Mass Communication program at Texas State University and a contributor to Texas Community Health News, a collaboration between the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the university's Translational Health Research Center. TCHN stories, reports and data visualizations are provided free to Texas newsrooms.